Dandelion
by xxskyWriterxx
Summary: It's a very pretty day today, Numbuh Four. I have shaken your shoulders and whispered to you with the gentlest words, but you just lay like a stone on your hospital bed. Your eyes, they can't see. Not even the sky. The coma has taken you for itself.
1. Day One

_Dear Numbuh Four,_

So here is where you've been, the whole time that I've called and called and called your name.

!

Calling and calling until I remembered that you don't like it when I call you that. I'm sorry, Numbuh Four; to be scared is a very terrible thing. Fear brings your heart to a flutter and your knees to a tremble. Your lungs shudder as if they are trying to suck in the whole sky. I was very scared, Numbuh Four. Even more scared than I am of the awful things that slither in my closet.

I ran everywhere. I flew so fast that I thought that my feet might tear through the sidewalk, my legs rippling the concrete stream. I called and I called and I called: I called for you until your name melted into a puddle of tired sounds, tired sounds that leaked over my chilled lips.

.

I looked everywhere that I could think of, but you were nowhere. Not in the treehouse, with your eyes angry and your fists angrier. Not in the corner store, with your tiny head stuck in one of your silly boy-comics. Not at the candy shop, with your mouth overflowing with sweets. Not at your house. Not at the park. Nowhere. My knees were suddenly rubber. There were tears, floods of salt bursting from my sticky eyes. I was all alone. Standing with the sun slipping down my back. Lonely as bad as loneliness can get. Sobbing on the shadowed concrete. But that was yesterday. Before I found out where you'd gone to.

It's a very pretty day today, Numbuh Four. I have shaken your shoulders and whispered to you with the gentlest words, but you still haven't answered. You just lay like a stone on your hospital bed.

Can you see? Can't you see?

Look at the sun, today, Numbuh Four: golden like the most precious thing. The wind trembles the leaves, and I hear a hissing like a thin crystal surf on the sand. There is a bitter wind out today. As I was racing to the hospital to see you yesterday, the wind slammed shivers like daggers into my skin. Ice swirling in my hair and in my ears. Flowing across my face like winter. Did I tell you about the trees? They are flushed with color, crisp as an apple's skin under my sneakers. Autumn is passing away.

I'm sorry that you can't see it.

The doctor says that you are sleeping and can't see anything through closed eyelids.

I am leaving you with Mr. Mopsy. He is tucked in next to you, snuggling under your covers. I know that you don't like him much, but he will keep you company. Whisper nice things into your ears. I hope that you can hear him, Numbuh Four, even if you can't hear me. Maybe when you finally raise your head from your mushroom pillow, you might read my letters and see what you couldn't before. Autumn is passing away.

_Your friend,_

**Numbuh Three**


	2. Day Two

_Dear Numbuh Four,_

Today I asked him, I asked the tall doctor man who swoops every day past your hospital bed.

Why is Wallabee asleep, doctor? Why is he asleep?

The doctor looked at me very stern-like, his eyes glaring down his beaky nose like a wicked queen in a long white robe. And then he told me. His voice is like the lead in a pencil: dark and sharp and crumbly, sticking into my face.

A coma.

This is what he says that you are in. A long and deadly sleep. Snow White after her bite of poison apple.

When will he wake up?

I asked this question in a very small way.

When will he wake up?

The doctor man just looked at me with his asphalt eyes. And then he swept me away. But I will still come back to visit you tomorrow.

_Your friend,_

**Numbuh Three**


	3. Day Three

_Dear Numbuh Four,_

There is a city around you. A tiny one, crowding around your bed, filled with many busy sounds. A city of machines. Machines that keep you alive, the doctor man says. Today while I stood by your bed, I looked at that tiny little city, looked at it long and hard. It is very thirsty, very loud and crying and hungry. It pierces your skin with its plastic tube tongues, and with electricity it pours liquid into your insides. This also keeps you alive, says the doctor man.

You are so cold, Numbuh Four. I touched your hand even though the doctor told me not to, and the winter in your skin sent my heart shrieking inside of me. Why are you so cold, Numbuh Four? Are you like a bear, curling up and dozing the cold of the autumn away? Maybe the coma has frozen toes, toes that prod you through your thin little hospital dress. The dress is thin like skin, and I know that if you saw it, you would shred it into dust with your fingers. The doctor man doesn't know you at all.

And so I brought you your pajamas. The fuzzy ones with the feet: the ones that you always wear when we have a sleepover. They are so bravely orange in your white cave of a hospital room. This hospital is a blizzard of whiteness and air conditioning and the stale lights that are stuck like blind eyes in the sad ceiling. It is all so very sad, Wallabee. Even your room is sick. Pale like dead things. I am almost glad that you can't see it, see it glaring all around you. But I will try my very best to fix it up pretty for you.

I stayed a very long time in your room, my pockets stuffed full of crayons: pieces of a shattered rainbow. I drew you the prettiest things that I could think of: flowers and birds and butterflies and the sun in a perfect sky. Splashes of life to color the blankness. I hope that you like them, Numbuh Four.

_Your friend,_

**Numbuh Three**


	4. Day Four

_Dear Wallabee,_

Today I climbed into your bed with you, just for a tiny minute. I dove into the snowdrift of scratchy covers and burrowed in. Your skin was much too cold to be alive. Cold as a dead bone. Frozen. You were a tiny slab of ice against my body.

I tried my best to warm you, Numbuh Four. I snatched up your fingers and bathed them in my fluttery breath. I zipped up your little pajamas extra tight, and I tucked you up in the lacey comforter that usually lounges on top of my own bed. The hospital's sheets are nothing but dead skin, and they must leave you naked and freezing when the twilight creeps through your window. The thought of you shivering in the empty darkness floods me with sadness.

I wrapped you in my arms, put my cheek to yours.

Ice.

Terrible ice.

Icy cold terror that seized my throat and wrenched at my stomach. My breath trembled and suddenly froze.

I was certain that you were dead.

Living boys do not lie flat under their covers, still as entombed stones. Living boys are not ice cream sandwiches, frozen solid under eternal glaciers.

My face was suddenly a waterfall, drenched and heavy with tears. Tears sliding down my cheeks, dripping from my nose, and plopping down like rain. Out of my mouth screamed the most terrible words.

Dead.

Gone.

Lost forever.

Swallowed by the earth.

I was a sad, sticky mess.

The doctor man looked at me like I was very stupid. He showed me a most strange device, one with a long name that I can't remember now. A heart-tracking device.

Every time his heart beats, the doctor said, this machine will beep.

I heard it then, the beeping. _Beep beep beep beep_. A very soft beeping. The beeping of the weak flush upon your cheeks, of the soft breath between your marble lips, of the rising and falling of your chest.

Life pulsed beneath your skin, and my despair slipped away.

I hope that you won't be mad at me.

_Your friend,_

**Numbuh Three**


	5. Day Five

_Dear Wallabee,_

You are a very loud person, the kind that screams and charges along the white-hot sand, toes aflame and arms flung up above their shining head. Bird-wing arms that slice deep into the sky. You are a cup, brimming full of life.

Can you remember that?

It is a strange thing, looking at you now, lifeless and frozen in silence, your mat of sad blonde hair paling like the grass without the sunlight. I remember you with your scuffed sneakers and little hooded sweater, shooting fiery words up at the boys that tower like redwood trees above you. You were always angry that way. I remember you with your flashlight, sweeping the quaking beam through the heavy blackness, terrified that a giant bug would suddenly loom down and swallow you whole. Don't worry; I won't tell. I remember you with your weights and your wrestling mat: the weights that are too heavy for you to lift and the mat that stinks of your own defeated sweat. Why do you keep them in your room, Wally? Do they bring you happiness? The happiness of boys is a very weird thing: it is filled with punches instead of hugs. Hopefully sometime you can explain it to me.

_Your friend_,

**Kuki**


	6. Day Six

_Dear Wallabee,_

_Coma_ is a pretty word. I thought it to myself during school today: _coma coma coma coma_. It could be the name of the most magical river. It could be the name of a beautiful place or a beautiful person. _Coma _like the most beautiful sound. How can such a delicate word mean such a terrible thing, Wally? I don't understand.

The coma has nearly dragged you away. I can tell as I hold your stony hand in mine. The coma's icy fingers claw deep into your very small self, piercing you with its cruel, steely chill. Sometimes by looking at you I cannot see the drops of life that still gleam from deep inside you. If it weren't for the _beep beep beep_ of your pulse, you would be all but dead. You with your beetle-black eyes that I haven't seen in a whole week. Granite skin. Your limp straw hair. Dandelion hair.

Could you be a dandelion, Wally? A dandelion sticking its golden head through canyons of tumbled concrete: a bloom of life amongst the dead. Can you do it, Wally? Can you? Please tell me that you can. I know that you can. You will escape, wrench away from the coma's tendrils and come stumbling into the daylight. One day soon, I will look over you and find myself sinking into your eyes. Open eyes. Eyes filled with the sun's fire and the moon's milk and the frosty glow of the stars . Eyes like diamonds. I will see them again. I am sure.

_Get well soon,_

**Kuki**


	7. Day Seven

_Dear Wally,_

Today there was a snowflake, blooming from the clouds' belly and floating down to rest on my sweater. A cloud-blossom. A crystal. I wanted to take it to you, Wally, but it faded into a droplet as soon as I stepped through the hospital doors. Maybe if you had seen it, you might remember how beautiful everything is.

But you can't see, can you?

Winter is very fragile, filled with silvery, glasslike things. They twinkle in the watery sunlight and they clink in the frozen breeze. I drew them for you: a crayon-y mess of gray and white and blue. It looks to me like a tangled spider-web, but just by looking at it I can feel the breath of winter raw on my cheeks. The picture hangs now over your bed, dangling on silver pins. I wish that you could feel it, Wally: the earth as it slides into a soft and wintry sleep. Sometimes I wish that I was the one sleeping, and that you were the one awake.

_Get well soon,_

**Kuki**


	8. Day Eight

_Dear Wally,_

There was a mission today, but I didn't go. I couldn't leave you, leave you all alone in your sad and bleary room. It made Numbuh One very angry, when he thought of me sitting in a hospital all day instead of coming along with him. He yelled until my face shone with tears, until all I could do was turn and dash away. Sometimes he is very mean, that Numbuh One. He said that I am wasting time. That I am throwing my time over my shoulder, time better spent doing other things. Important things.

I had better not write any more.

_Get well soon,_

**Kuki**


	9. Day Nine

_Dear Wally,_

Today I found the strangest thing on my lawn; a rose of crumpled notebook paper, with the notebook-lines dripping blue into the wet white spaces. The letters were mostly bled away, but I spotted four very special letters in the soggy mess of ink:

K-U-K-I.

My name. My name on the notebook paper. I clutched it until my fingers were stained with its deep blue tears.

Days ago, the doctor told me a story.

Your daddy found you on my lawn, the doctor told me. Called the ambulance when he found that your eyes would not open. You were broken and crumpled, said the doctor. Your head was oozing blood. The ground was stained a deadly scarlet. Next to you there were the splintered chunks of a ladder, a hobbled ladder with broken bones.

I have just noticed: nestled on the paper beside my name there sits a beautiful, scribbled ink-heart. A heart drawn just the way that you would draw it: trembling with embarrassed squiggling lines.

Wally, Wally.

Right away I know what had happened.

Wally, Wally, creeping to my window when you thought no one was looking, dragging a spindly ladder under your small arm. Wally, Wally, scaling my wall as if you were Rapunzel's brave little prince. In a sweaty hand you held the notebook paper, the paper with your pretty heart blooming inside. One foot clambering after the other. Hands pulling you up rung after rung. You did not know of the ladder's crooked leg; the leg that would collapse and send you crashing to the ground. Suddenly it was too late. The land twisted beneath you. The earth yawned hard and fast. SLAM and you were shattered. Your ribs were smashed, your limbs tangled. Suddenly your lungs were choked, all the sweet breath torn away. It was then that the coma took you; it gathered you in its arms and carried you away into night.

I'm sorry if you can't read this messy letter. The words are now smeared and blotted as if by an angry rain shower. I cry and I cry and I cry. I don't think that the tears will ever stop.

Wally, Wally, my prince.

**Kuki**


	10. Day Ten

_Dear Wally,_

Today I asked him for real. I asked the doctor a very real question. My eyes were streaming rivers. My hands were as stiff as yours, your tiny frozen fingers sleeping soft in mine.

"When will he wake up, doctor?

Wally?

When will he wake up?"

The doctor looked at me. I looked back at him. The air conditioning vents wheezed with mildew. The ceiling sagged. The floors shone as though they were glazed with the clearest ice. And still he didn't answer.

"Listen now," he said. "Listen to me. You will not like what you hear, but I must tell you anyway.

Some people: they wake from a coma just fine. They slide out of bed and go back about their business. It's like nothing ever happened.

Some people...Some people do not. The eyes of these people will never open again. They will never again see the sunlight. They are trapped forever in sleep."

His eyes flickered towards you and it was suddenly as if everything on the earth was watching. I held your hand very tightly in mine.

No, came my little shivery whisper.

No.

"The boy's family cannot afford to keep him plugged in for much longer. In a few days the machines will be switched off."

My eyes were empty.

Terrible pictures flooded into my mind: your lonely hospital room, your room swept as clean as a paper's blank face…a bleached cave of horrible dead space. The bed vacant. The air heavy with the slumber of the machines, the machines that once kept you alive.

Do you know what the scariest thing was?

The quiet.

There was no more beeping. Your heart, it was silent. Your heart that you delivered to me with bleeding ink.

I couldn't think of it anymore. My tears crashed to the ground and my breath rung in the air.

I can't just say goodbye.

**Kuki**


	11. Day Eleven

_Dear Wally,_

Wally, are you ready to die? Are you ready for that moment when you open your eyes and still see nothing? Will you be able to tell the difference between death's void and the coma's prison of slumber? Are you ready to say goodbye, to send your words away like wind from your stony lips? You can't say them, so I will write them down for you.

Goodbye to the sky that has always smiled down on you. Goodbye to the trees that drape you in their shadows on summer days and in the fall rain their autumn gold down on your forehead. Goodbye to the sun that scatters your hair with its burning jewels and flows warm across your skin. Goodbye to the grass, to the dew, to the morning breeze, to the earth, to the sand, to the water than you used to think would creep up in the night and suck you into its dark belly. Goodbye to the Kids Next Door.

You have to say goodbye to so many things, so many things that I didn't even think of until I wrote them.

Are you ready, Wally?

I'm not. I can't. I can't just let you go. Let you slip away where I can't ever see you again. Lose you to the darkness of the stale earth, your little body entombed under seas of rock and soil. Tumbled bones pressed into streams of trickling dust.

Thinking of your lost bones swamps my eyes with tears. You are a boy: living, breathing, and running strong, strong like the thundering tide. You with your bruised fingers and your diamond-fire eyes and the smile that sometimes creeps onto your face when you think that there is no one around to see it. You can't die, Wally. Not when you have so much to live for.

Love,

**Kuki**


	12. Day Twelve

_Dear Wally, _

Tomorrow is the day that it all will end. The doctors told me so, they told me as I flung open the glass of the gleaming hospital doors. Tomorrow is the day that you will be taken away from me: thirsty plugs wrenched from their sockets and the plastic veins of life torn from your fragile skin. It is terrible to think that tomorrow your heart will be nothing but a dead stone in your chest. The air without your pulse will be empty and silent, as if a gaping hole were ripped out of the sky. I can't think about it anymore, Wally. It simply can't be. I want to cry but still my cheeks are dry. Dry like sand. Dry like the ground where you will be buried tomorrow.

The place is called Running Meadows, said the doctor, and you will be very safe there. Safe to rest and dream forever and ever and ever until the end of time, your eyelids frosted in the pale starlight. Slumbering beneath the trees and the flowers and the shadows and the fields of whispering grass. It sounds very beautiful, Wally. Running Meadows. Maybe you will like it there. Maybe if I visit the Meadows I will see your little ghost, laughing and sprinting with your feet like the wind on the fields. You would like that, I think.

Before I came to see you today I went to visit the Running Meadows, just so I could see it before they bring you there next morning. The grave-workers have a plaque for you, Wally, a plaque to rest above your earth-bed so everyone will know that it is you who sleeps there under their feet. The plaque is glassy like a dark rectangular pool, and on it there is your name, your name etched in serious letters. I asked the grave-people if they could make the letters happier for you, but they said no. I asked them if they could put a special message on the plaque for me, but still they shook their heads. They are not very nice, those grave-people. So instead I wandered out over the meadow, all by myself, and plucked flowers out of the soft earth. Dandelions, with their fuzzy heads beaming like tiny suns in the grass. Dandelions just for you. Dandelions like your little yellow head in the sun.

I braided them together, the dandelions. With my green-stained fingers I twisted the stems into a braid of sunlight, and then I wreathed it like fog around your box: the wooden box that tomorrow will be your bed. I hope that you like them, Wally. I hope that the grave-people don't mind.

I am bringing your ink-heart with me, Wally, the one that you drew for me on your bleeding notebook paper. You wanted me to have it. I will buy the prettiest picture frame and hang it like a moon over my bed, so I can look at it every night and think of you.

I will miss you.

I will miss you more than I've ever missed someone before. And as I sit by your bed with your cold hand in mine, I think that I will give you a kiss: just a little one, like a sweet raindrop on your cheek. It will give you something special to take with you on your way to your earth-bed. You tried, Wally, you really tried. I will never stop thinking of you, the little dandelion gleaming like gold in my hands.

Sweet dreams,

**Kuki**


	13. The Dream

_**Some place in the Universe at some time that I don't know (so don't ask me):**_

**I **have just realized something: something so weird and strange and disturbing that it's sending my wonderful brain tripping and falling over itself (fine, so maybe my brain's not so wonderful after all).

I don't know where the **heck **I am.

No, really.

I've got completely and utterly **no cruddy clue**.

Now why I haven't I been having seizures over this? I don't know what's happening. I don't know what's happened. I can't remember anything. I can't feel anything. **Everything is just gone.** I can't see it. (Crikeycrikeycruddycrudcrud).

It's like I've been sealed beneath a sky of water, thick and black as night, slamming down into my skull and crushing me into angry blobs of jelly. (Preserves of Numbuh Four, maybe). Smothering me. **Squeezing out my breath**.

**Can I even breathe anyways?** I can't find my lungs; they seem to have wandered off somewhere on stubby legs of their own. So have my eyelashes. So have my arms. And where the cruddy heck is my head? On vacation, I guess. Off frolicking somewhere Else along with the fascinating organ that is my mind. (That stupid little organ)

My toes are gliding, sliding through the Wallabee-verse, stars beaming through my eyeballs and spurting out in sparkling constellations from my very surprised ears. (This would happen if I could actually find my toes, my eyeballs or my ears. Those stupid things.) Space is pulsing through me: a river gurgling and glimmering through its muddy banks. **Nebulae clogging up my throat with clouds of murky glitter.** I wonder if those nebulae would taste like cotton candy, and would puddle into sugary goo on my tongue. Maybe I should try it sometime.

_**Some other cruddy place in the Universe at some other cruddy time (or maybe it's the same place….I dunno…):**_

**H**ang on…I think that** I saw something**. I dunno. I just thought that I did.

I suck in a breath and suddenly I'm impaled. I'm clutched in an **airless **grip, like an iron fist crushing my windpipe into two dimensions. Oh crud: now there is cold, **rippling cold, shivering up over my skin**. It's as if I'm rising, ever so slowly, like a balloon from the ocean's foulest armpit. Around me everything is silent and frozen, crystallized into a pane of the darkest glass. Warmth touches my fingertips, spills down my back, flows across my cheeks (have I finally found my body?). Above me the heavy sky **trembles with wriggling light**, light that floods like a wave thundering over my head. My arms are stretching high over my head, higher and higher until my shoulders are throbbing with the reaching (If only I was taller—just a little tiny bit- crud).

That's when I see something. I don't really know what the heck it is. It's just something. **A square of pale light** in front of me. Bleeping lights, bleeping in a way that makes me want to sock them. They're like computer lights (fat chance!), with tiny heads of green bleepiness. The light-square lurches in the clouding gloom.

Suddenly something shudders. Shatters. Smashes. Whatever the word is.

My eyes are smeared with blackness. My lungs collapse. My legs are stone. I'm sinking, an avalanche crawling up my arms, the ocean of darkness burying me in its cruddy freezing blanket. I'm swallowing, choking again.

**And so I'm back. **

Back in the Wallabee-verse. Of course.

I'll probably be stuck here forever, with my stupid rotten luck. Like **a dream that I'm never gonna wake up from. **

A comet glitters past my shoulder, glittering like an annoying glittering thing that's just asking for a smack. But it just sparkles through my fingers, flitting away into the night like some annoying bird. I suck at my blistered fingers, my brain saying "crudcrudcrudcrudcrudcrikey" over and over and over again.

**Shut up**, brain, just

shut

up.

Seriously.

_**The same crud place, another crud time: **_

**I**'ve been trying. Trying and trying and trying and trying and trying some more. I've thrashed with my stupid legs and clawed with my stupid fingers and spun my stupid arms round and round and round like stupid windmills.

**None of it does any good.**

"Sure; it'll work!" my brain says, flashing its teeth at me in its very optimistic, organ-y smile (not really, but I bet that it _would_ if it had teeth).

"Don't make me kick y'a," I wanted to say, but the words melted on my tongue before I could hurl them out of my mouth. **Stupid, lousy organ of a brain.** (yeah; take that!)

"This place is like water, right?" my brain splutters to me. "So if ya paddle around hard enough, ya just might be able to swim out! See; it's foolproof!"

I know that **there's something important up there**. Up there over my head where it's way too high for me to reach even in my wildest daydreams (this is how everything is, really). Up there is where the only **light** is in this cruddy sinkhole of a Wallabee-verse. Everywhere else there's nothing but blackness. Stupid, cruddy blackness. Getting in my way. It had might as well be shaking its bum in my face.

I batter at the **blackness** with my fists until I remember that I can't really do that because you can't punch the dark. Crud. I slice the space with my fingers, tugging at the galaxies and the nebulae and the winking stars and anything else that I can tug at. I've got to get outta here. I've just gotta. I've gotta to swim to the surface.

And then suddenly I remember something, something that comes stabbing into my brain like a glacier of brain-freeze:

**I can't swim.**

For a second my brain's silent.

Then:

"Crudcrudcrudcrudcrudcrudcrud".

_**In the Wallabee-verse-at The End (well, nearly):**_

**O**hcrudohcrudohcruddycrudcrud. Just when I thought that it couldn't get any darker: it does. (Of course it does). It's **darker than dark**. Murkier than murk. Deader than dead. That's what I've got to be.

I've got to be **dead**.

My stomach's turned to stone. Pluto's sagging in my belly, weighing a zillion frozen, useless tons. My heart's hammering and hammering and hammering and then hammering some more. Any second now, it'll pop into a billion splatting bits, splurting my ribcage and then possibly dribbling out from my nose.

Around me, the** blackness** blooms. Swells like an ever-swelling universe of swelling-ness (real swell). A black garden of weedy weeds, worming and twisting their way up my elbows, towering over my tiny head and glowering like the stony eyebrows of Mount Rushmore. Gloom is yawning over me and I never thought that gloom could yawn over me before. I'm caught in its hulking shadow, my heart slithering down my leg and my eyes wrapped up in a flood of sticky velvet darkness. Clods of **velvety air** jammed deep in my throat.

The floor drops out from under my body and suddenly I'm drowned in a whole universe of nothing.

I'm gonna die.

I'm dead.

I've got to be.

**Deader than the deadest dead thing**.

Maybe I'm a pair of floating eyeballs, eyeballs forever stained with blots of sour black Sharpie. Rays of **Sharpie blackness** tangling over me. My lungs, they are flat. Flat like gasping balloons.

My cruddy brain, even splattering into bits as it is, manages to spew out some brilliant words of wisdom:

"Oh well. No one'll miss ya anyways. Fun talkin' to ya though, little buddy!"

Bloody brilliant.

I barely even notice the first **snowflake of light**, a little bit of firefly fluttering down past me (yeah, impending demise can do that to ya, after all). There's a teeny little spot of bright, winking at me through inky waves of Sharpie. Suddenly there's five of them. Then ten. Then twenty. Fifty. A hundred. A thousand. And then **way-too-many to-count**, a nebula of embers glittering and clouding around. A web of fire-stars glittering at my fingers and twinkling in my hair. Ripples of light quivering over my cement eyelids. I would say that it's weird but now I don't really know what to say. And so I say,

"Crikey."

**WHAM**. It's suddenly pitch dark, as if some loon has just ripped out the Universe's plug. My stomach pitches away and I plunge back into the trachea of the dark, my arms wheeling around and my heart thudding my throat and the lights sprouting up and popping away. I make a noise like "hungggh!" and THUD: I'm tumbling back into the stomach of the stupid Wallabee-verse. My bum is throbbing sore from the fall. My teeth are shredding my tongue into blood.

I should've just kept my cruddy trap shut.

But **I'm still alive**.

Only barely, probably.

But so wonderfully, beautifully alive.

I'd thank someone but I don't really know who to thank. And so I just sit here, my eyes falling open wide enough to let the whole galaxy come waltzing in. Real big.

_**In the Wallabee-verse-I have a genius, Nobel Prize revelation!: **_

**H**ere it is: my stupid bum self must be stuck in some kind of crud **sleep**, an especially crud sleep that as hard as I try I can't pry my brains from ("Kiss that Nobel Prize goodbye", says that stupid brain that is most definitely _not_ mine).

A swift mental brain-punch and I'm back to stumbling around, the murkiness slogging up round my ankles as I do. I'm yelping and I'm hollering and I'm howling my lungs dry:

"**WAKE UP**!"

"Try 'stupid lummox'," suggests the brain that is most definitely not mine. "Ya won't hear yerself unless ya yell something that will REALLY catch your attention! (mostly because it's true, mind you…)"

I don't want to listen but I yell,

"**STUPID LUMMOX!" **anyhow.

No dice.

Crud.

Then it hits me that this is the weirdest thing that I've ever done: I'm trying to wake myself up. From the inside. Yeah.

**Moron**dumbbell**thickhead**dope**idiot**lummox**dunce**clod**imbecile**.

I'm Wallabee the Witless Wonder. Or at least I wish that I was, what with that stupid organ-that-calls-itself-my-brain always sprouting its crud at me.

I blunder around like a fool in the gloom (which I am), clawing my hands around and feeling with my fingers for something to strike. Maybe a good, hard punch-on-the-brain will wake me up, or at least shut a certain incompetent organ up for a bit. But there's only **air**, air dribbling down my forehead and streaming between my fingers. **Air that is no good to me**.

I thump myself down, folding my marble arms so tightly that they probably won't come loose until eons later. I hope so at least. Armies of jeering giggles (compliments of the brain-that-is-most-definitely-not-mine) whack viciously at my stupid ears, pounding me into a **little stone ball** with my knees smooshed against my chest and my arms locked around my knees and my cheeks slammed into my thighs, my eyes scrunched and heavy with dreaded tears. Oh no. Oh crud. Lousy lousy lousy lousy lousy **TEARS**. I sniffle. I breathe. I blink. With my Jedi mind-powers I will my eyeballs to slurp back up their thundering floodwaters. But of course I still can't hope to stop them.

The dam collapses. I lurch and suddenly there's **tears** slithering over my retinas, **tears** glistening in the dark, **tears** trickling down my cheeks and **tears** dripping and drenching my sleeves. Rivers of hot, sticky salt. A whole tropical rainstorm gushing outta my cruddy tear ducts.

I'm Wallabee the Wondrous Weeping Human Hosepipe.

**And I'm dead, too. **

Well, I **ought** to be.

_**What I saw**_

**I** saw her right there, right above my head. Floating. Floating like some beautiful alien or like a flower gliding on a murky pool. I saw her. I was choking on my own lousy tears when I saw her.

I saw **an angel**.

No, REALLY.

I'm sure of it.

She was the **most beautiful thing**. The most beautiful thing that I've ever ever seen, her dark curtain of hair framing her face in **moonshine**. Somehow her darkness wasn't freaky-like, not like the cruddy black pit of the Wallabee-verse that I'm sealed away in. It was black like a night rain burbling over my skin. It was all that I could do just to breathe. **Breathing had never been harder** than it was right then. My stupid lungs had nearly sputtered dry.

Her frosted eyelids had slid open to unveil her eyes, her eyes like bright windows peeking down at me from the mountaintops, flattening my spine with glacial light. Her ice had impaled me, but I was **frozen too still** to shiver. (I wonder if she could see me with my cheeks all flushed with the blushing? Oh crikey; I hope not…) Warmth jabbed at my skin but I didn't move. I might have scared her away, knocked her away with my stupid flailing legs. **I didn't want to make her disappear**.

Like the rising moon she suddenly bloomed over me. **Sunlight **touched my cheek and spread, running down my arms, slipping over my nose, dripping from my fingertips. Tears glistening in her eyes and the world balanced on her smile. Her smile, it slid heavy into my stomach and settled there.

Suddenly my breath was **gone**.

And so was she.

Her face swallowed by the darkness, her smiling glimmering with teardrops.

I think **I know who she is**. But I hope that I'm wrong.

'Cause I don't want Numbuh Three to see me like this.

Oh crikey. Oh crud crud crud cruddy crud crud.

I hope that she didn't see me **cry**.

_**Is she waiting for me?**_

Well, already, is she? Is she looking over at me, right now, her **summer tears** splashing on my lousy head? Well, is she?

I don't know. I hold her fallen smile like a bonfire sparkling on my palm.

**She can't cry.**

I don't want to be the one to make her cry.

She probably **hates **me. She'll hate me and hate me and hate me forever and ever. But I don't know how to plug up her waterworks. I don't think that I can snatch myself some cruddy duct tape and just stick her pieces back together. **I'd probably screw it up**, and the tears would spill out like Niagara Falls from her eyes. I'd deserve to drown.

I've gottta tell her.

I've just got to tell her.

I've gotta get outta here.

I've gotta wake up.

I've got to tell her.

**WAKE UP**!

Please, stupid brain.

Light puddles around my sneakers and all I can say is .

PLEASE.

Light spilling down my throat.

I've got to tell her.

Light crystalizing on my eyelashes.

I've got to wake up.

**She needs to hear. **


	14. Lights

**4:00 A.M.**

Light.

That's the only thing that I see.

Blinding prisms of dazzling white stuff, exploding into hungry shards that impale my eyes.

My eyes. They're like raw eggs. Blind. They stream with wet stickiness and suddenly my heart wrenches as I realize that I'm crying. Sore tears are glittering in the light's neon imprint, the one that's probably been permanently seared into my eyelids, a pink shadow that rears its cruddy head with every blink.

Crikey.

It's like I've never opened my eyes up before. Like my eyelids have been sealed with concrete. But now they're splitting open, stinging in the air, flooding full of bitter florescent light. It's all I can do just to blink.

To breathe.

Even my lungs ache, retching and gasping as if I've just nearly drowned. The air throbs something terrible as I gulp it up. My arms are hanging like stones at my sides—I've only just noticed them. My legs weigh about a zillion cruddy pounds. I might as well go lift up a mountain: I'll never be able to move them. I'm suddenly aware of my forehead, beading with icy sweat, my hair plastered to my skin in dripping hunks. I'm Wallabee the Wispy, Wretched Wretch.

Deader and deader than dead. I've got to be.

But I'm not.

I'm not.

I can see.

The fog is dripping away, the universe crystalizing at my fingertips.

The bed sheets are glaciers, smothering me in ice. There is a _beep beep beep_ singing out from above my head and there is a stupid plastic tube stuck horridly into the crook of my useless arm. I want to seize it and rip it the heck out of my skin, but my lousy arm won't lift.

I blink.

I breathe.

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out… (don't forget to breathe!).

My lungs are shuddering. My eyelids are drooping (when the heck did they get so heavy?). There is this square-ish window on the wall across from my bed, shivering with silvery moonlight. That square blasts itself against my brain and suddenly I remember that I've seen it before. I've totally seen it before. Cruddy freaking heck.

Maybe I really am dead. Darkness is spider-webbing across my eyes and seizing my lungs in its frozen fists, dragging me down, weighing me like a billion-ton anchor tugging at my toes. Maybe I'm laying on some stone bed in purgatory, while they try to figure out where to chuck me for eternity. Nobody knows. They've probably forgotten me. And probably nobody cares because everybody knows that nobody cares about me. Or maybe they don't know because they don't care.

Whatever.

I could throw myself shrieking off the Grand Canyon and not even the birds would notice. ("What _was_ that, a stray wind?") Geez.

Why am I alive anyways?

I probably won't live long enough to figure it out.

I'm sinking.

Empty blackness is sinking through my retinas and winding through my intestines and pooling in my stomach. Pouring through my ears and soaking my brain. Filling my lungs with tons and tons and tons of freezing iron. Sparks glint in the back of my eyelids, beckoning me, tugging at the corners of my brain, shoving me back to the rim of the hole of the Wallabee-verse. My toes are trembling at the edge of that ginormous abyss, the black waters of sleep lapping and drooling at my feet. I struggle to breathe and to blink and to focus my eyes and suddenly I wonder why in the heck I'm even bothering to stay awake in the first place.

The KND probably won't even notice that I'm gone. Give or take a few days and they'll be all "Wallabee who?" They'll go find some other kid to induct, some other smiling kid to pin my number on, some other kid to call "Numbuh 4". They'll probably rescue that kid when he gets knocked out, smile when he lands a good punch, and when he's sick, they'll send him gallons and gallons of chicken noodle soup. And then they'll wonder why they didn't try that earlier. The guy doesn't even exist yet and already I'm jealous of him. That scummy little snot.

I blink and suddenly my world is glittering. There are these crazy drops sparkling on my eyelashes, little blurs of slithering light. I suck in a breath and my eyeballs twinkle with the glow of the bare bulbs that are buzzing over my dumb little head. It's not until I feel a sore drip on my cheeks do I realize that I'm exploding with a whole bloody shower of tears. Terrible, terrible, terrible tears. I lay like a rock in a rainstorm, breathing as the downpour thunders over me. Breathing and breathing and breathing and sobbing and sobbing and sobbing.

Sob sob sob.

I probably look a drenched, half-drowned mess.

And that's when I remember my angel.

My angel. In my mind, she suddenly blooms out of thin air, sliding down over me, her tears splashing my cheeks like spring dew from a rose. She's so lovely that even her tears are lovely. So lovely in fact that I would reach out and catch them in my hands, just to look at them for a little longer. But I can't. I struggle and my heart flutters but still my lazy arms won't move. Not even a millimeter. Crud.

Her fingers are the most beautiful things. I notice it as they crawl up my shoulders, as I am wrapped in her arms and drenched in her rivers of shining hair. I've never really thought that fingers could be so beautiful. Or that they could be beautiful at all. They're just fingers. But they're really not.

Not with her.

With her, everything is so beautiful that it releases a fresh tide of tears burbling over my eyelashes and glistening on my cheeks. So beautiful I'm choking on my tears all over again. But I guess that is how it is with angels.

Her eyes are shivering with wetness and bursting with some kind of heavenly glitter, a glitter that I wish I could just drink up and swallow. A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth because it makes me think of the Wallabee-verse and its cotton candy clouds of glittering nebula. Okay, so maybe I won't drink. Instead I close my eyes and feel her flowery breath on me, her tears trickling on my arms and dripping like sugar from my fingers.

I can't die.

I shudder and I breathe real slow, drinking in every oxygen atom and sucking up every drop of airy goodness.

I can't die.

Not while she's still sitting here, drowning me in her tears. In my wonderful mind I sit up and wipe her cheeks with my papery hospital gown sleeves, just so she can see that I'm not dead. That I am alive and am more alive than any other alive thing.

I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive. ALIVE. **A-L-I-V-E.**

Yes, yes, I am.


	15. Epilogue: The Running Meadows

Her sneakers glistened with fresh morning dew as she strode over the lawns. A breeze puffed through, the carpet of grass blades whispering and twinkling as she passed, her curtain of dark hair swirling around her. The air smelled fresh like spring earth: it was as if the atmosphere had been stripped away and replaced with a brand new one. She sucked in a cool breath of it, her lungs shivering. Kuki pulled her sweater around her, her every nerve pulsing with life.

Birds twittered as she threw her gaze out over the meadows, the rolling hills that seemed to stretch for miles before her. Bursts of reflected sunlight dazzled from the grass around her, searing bright geometric shapes into her eyelids. She blinked and the imprints flashed neon pink, her vision smattered with tears. With her sleeve she wiped them away, crouching to squint down at the long rows of grave markers winding away from her, marching along the hills like soldiers in formation. They glimmered on the meadow, rectangular pools of dark marble, their smooth faces etched with names and dates. Kuki didn't recognize any of the names, but looking at them still she felt sadness slide like a stone into her stomach. She imagined the endless rows of people sleeping in the earth beneath her feet. Thousands of blind faces turned up at her, their eyes smothered with soil.

Kuki was drenched in a sudden terror. She felt like she shouldn't be there, like she was the most terrible kind of trespasser. For a second she longed to sprint away, to tear her feet away from the lawns of Running Meadows and run far out of sight. But no. She stiffened her lip and straightened her spine. On the hills below her she saw others, bright splotches of color swimming in the sea of sparkling green. There were adults. There were children. They held bright bouquets and blankets, wreathing the graves with garlands of flowers. They sang. They cried. They smiled and Kuki smiled along with them. Gathering her spirits, she turned on the sweet grass and trod on. It was another few minutes until she found what she was looking for.

She knelt down before it, breathing. In the gravestone's polished surface she saw her own face, reflected as if she was peering into water instead of stone. The name on it stood out somberly before her.

_Wallabee Beetles._

"**WAAAAAALLY**!" she screamed, tilting her head to the sky. "I FOUND it!"

He came scrambling over the hill to join her.

"Eim comin', eim comin'!" Wally wheezed, clutching at his sides as he hobbled over the grass with his short legs. "Geez, yeh don't haft'a yell at me like that!"

He staggered into Kuki's shoulder, his knees trembling and his golden head crowned with sunshine. She opened her mouth but he cut her short.

"Eim fine…" he puffed, closing his eyes. Kuki looked at him and for a moment she saw that ghost of a boy recovering in his hospital bed—the one who hadn't even been able to turn over without taking on the pallor of death itself. So she took his arm, just to be safe. Wally's throat closed, his cheeks rosy in the morning sun. In the corner of his eye loomed the gravestone, and despite himself he turned to look at it. Her hand on his elbow, Kuki turned along with him.

_Wallabee Beetles._

The silence weighed like concrete upon them. The grass whipped in the wind. Voices floated over the meadow. An airplane ripped through the sky. The tide of traffic hushed past. In the sun Wally's gravestone glimmered like beckoning death.

Wally wanted to speak, but his words turned to ash on his tongue. Terror froze his guts and his mind sagged. Part of him regretted the decision to come and see his gravestone. Another part of him cursed the grave-people for not taking it out yet. With it glaring at him it was almost as if the coma had actually taken him. As if he had actually died.

He became aware that he was kneeling, his jeans damp through the knees from the wet earth. He felt the touch of sun on his back, the tickle of his bangs in the breeze, and Kuki's arm on his. He felt the planet turn around him. Even with his own deathbed sitting mere inches before him he'd never felt so blissfully alive. Wally sucked in a deep breath and found himself suddenly smothered in Kuki's sweater.

His heart could have leapt a skyscraper. His face against her shoulder was burning so fiercely that he half expected her to feel it through her clothes. Her tears dripped down his neck. Her heart thumped against his skin. Her arms were strong around him. Wally shoved the gravestone out of his mind and clutched her long sleeves, his brain popping with butterflies. Swallowing his terror, he coughed, clearing the silence from his parched throat. It was now or never.

"K…Kuki?" he managed, his voice barely a whisper on his lips. "Since I...well, 'cause eim not dead...I wanna tell you somethin'…somethin' that I should'a told yeh a long time ago and…"

Helplessly he looked up. She seemed to loom above him, her eyes shimmering and her hair billowing in the breeze.

He might as well have been talking to God Himself.

In horror Wally tore himself away, crumpling and burying his face in his hands.

"CRUD, I CAN'T DO IT!" he howled, teardrops glittering from his fingers. "EV'RY TIME I TRY I JUST **CAN'T**! I CAN'T DO IT! I CAN'T I CAN'T I CAN'T! **CRUD**!"

Blinking, Kuki stared at him. She'd never seen him cry.

Wally's forehead sagged into the grass, his fists pounding the ground and his tears dripping from underneath his bangs.

"EIM JUST TOO DUMB!" he bellowed, his voice thick with agony. "AND THIS CHANCE IS NEVEH GONN'A COME AGAIN AND EV'RY TIME I TRY IT JUST COMES OUT ALL WRONG AND SOMETHIN' ALWAYS GETS IN MY WAY AND I DON'T KNOW WHY AND I DON'T UNDERSTAND AND…" He swallowed. "…_Why_ can't I just tell yeh that I love y-"

Wally felt his lungs collapse in his chest cavity; it was as if the universe itself had collapsed on top of him. Kuki's mouth fell open. Wally wished that lightning would suddenly appear to strike him dead (hopefully that grave was more comfortable than it looked). His eyes streaming with humiliation he scrabbled upright, only to be yanked back down into the grass again. Kuki's hand was on his wrist. He opened his mouth to speak but his sentence was stillborn.

Kuki beamed over him.

"Yay, say it _again_!" she sang, a light kindling in the jewels of her eyes. Her smile was like the sun over him. She didn't specify but he knew exactly what she wanted him to say.

"I…l-love you," Wally stammered, unable to wrench his gaze away from her. Kuki let out a little squeal and pulled him in, her mouth touching his forehead in a quick peck.

"I love _you_ too!"

Her arms looped back around him and he found himself tumbled on her lap, blushing red and thoroughly robbed of speech.

Neither of them knew exactly how long they sat like that, holding each other, the sun radiating over them and the birds twittering. They watched the clouds billow across the sky. They watched the cars scream down the highway. They watched the grass hissing and waving in the wind like some kind of green ocean. They watched the shadows creeping from underneath the shrubs.

For a long while they were in the woods instead of in the Running Meadows.

But even entwined in her arms, Wally couldn't forget. The grave markers gleamed at him like eyes in the earth. And there was still his own grave, sunken with shadow and staring at him. His gaze hovered over it and he could feel cheated death, an icy claw twisting in his stomach. He blinked and found his cheeks dripping with saltwater. Against his will his body trembled from head to toe. Kuki held him close, stopping his heart with a kiss to the top of his head.

"Don't be scared, Wally," she whispered, mopping his tears with her sleeve. He tried to protest but could only cough. She gathered his small hand in hers and pulled him to his feet, steering him away from the grave. She wanted him as far away from it as possible.

"Let's just go home," she said, squeezing him. "I've got some stuff for you to read."

Wally looked up at her with a crooked smile, his eyes dewy in the dappled sun.

"Not more cruddy homework, is it?"

"No." She grinned. "I wrote this stuff for you myself."

-END-


End file.
